A book can help with
For the child undone by a cancelled plan, a lost match, or a day that all went wrong.
Disappointment is one of the first real aches of childhood: the party that’s rained off, the prize that went to someone else, the whole day that simply refused to go right. A small child hasn’t yet learnt that a letdown is survivable, so it can land as the end of the world, complete with tears and a slammed door.
A book helps by showing a character have a rotten time of it, feel thoroughly fed up, and come out the other side to find the world’s still turning. That gentle arc, from crushed to alright again, is exactly the perspective a disappointed child can’t yet find for themselves. These do it with warmth and a good deal of humour.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Not what they wanted
At this age disappointment mostly looks like being the smallest, or being told that a thing is not going to happen after all. Each of these sits with that for a good while before anything improves.
Titch has the little bicycle, the little kite and the smallest of everything else, while his brother and sister have the big versions. Then he plants a seed. Hutchins never once says how Titch feels about any of it, which is why very small children read him so accurately.
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A boy plants a carrot seed and every single member of his family tells him it will not come up. He keeps watering it anyway. Almost no words at all, and it holds the disappointment right through to the last page.
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A rotten day
At this age it’s the tears and the slammed door over a spoiled plan. These name the feeling with humour, and quietly promise the day will end.
Everything goes wrong for Alexander, from gum in his hair to no dessert in his lunch, and he threatens to run away to Australia. It’s very funny, and its quiet comfort is that everyone has days like this, even in Australia, and they do end. A classic for the child convinced the whole world is against them today.
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A girl sets out to build the most magnificent thing, and when it keeps coming out wrong she gets crosser and crosser, until she’s ready to quit altogether, before a walk clears her head. It’s brilliant on the fury of things not turning out as you pictured, and on the value of a break and another go. Good for the child who melts down when it isn’t perfect.
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Bigger letdowns
Older children can take a gentler, wiser story about falling short of what they’d hoped, and finding that it isn’t the disaster it felt like.
Ramon loves to draw until an offhand comment makes him feel his pictures are all wrong, and he nearly gives up, until his little sister shows him that a drawing can be ‘tree-ish’ or ‘house-ish’ and still be wonderful. It’s a lovely antidote to the disappointment of things not being good enough, and it takes the sting out of falling short of perfect. A gentle, freeing little book.
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Michael is the smallest boy on the court and does not make the team, and his mother does not promise him it will all be fine. It was written by Michael Jordan's mother and sister, which gives the ending its weight. Useful when a child has been left out of something and wants to stop trying.
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When the plan falls apart
By eleven a child can lose something they had properly counted on, and be old enough to know that nobody is to blame for it. Each of these lets that stand rather than hurrying to fix it.
Nick is twelve, football is the whole of his life, and then an injury takes the season away while his parents’ marriage comes apart in the same stretch. Told in verse, with a great deal of wordplay, by the author of The Crossover. It is funny in places, which makes the losses land harder. American, so the football is soccer.
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Short accounts of people who were turned down flat, sometimes for years, before anything went right for them. A few pages each, so a child can dip in. More use in the week after something has fallen through than on the day itself.
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Something to do together
A simple page for naming what went wrong, having a good grumble about it, and finding one good thing that’s still standing. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
The useful thing a child slowly learns is that disappointment, however enormous it feels, passes, and that a rotten day or a lost match takes nothing from tomorrow. These books plant that idea long before they can reason their way to it.
So let them be properly fed up for a bit rather than jollying them straight out of it, and then help them spot what’s still good. A child who’s allowed to feel the letdown, and then watch it lift, learns they can weather the next one.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults meeting disappointment and dashed hopes.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.